Bo Burnham Has Explained the Dumpster Fire That Is Social Media Better Than Anybody

Platforms like TikTok and Instagram are engines of distraction and cultural rot. They stand in front of the more difficult but more rewarding aspects of life: deep work, intimate connections with friends and loved ones, focused attention for hobbies with intrinsic rewards. By training users to crave constant novelty and the immediate approval of an... See more

per Max Read, “The main purpose of social media is to call attention to yourself.” As he points out in this essay I still love, the fact that anyone can join social media and publish an opinion lends the industry a democratic air while it profits off of our every spare thought. We’re lulled into a stupor and call it participation. “Each new byte of... See more

In June 2006, when Facebook was still months from launching its News Feed, Mr. Goldhaber predicted the grueling personal effects of a life mediated by technologies that feed on our attention and reward those best able to command it. “In an attention economy, one is never not on, at least when one is awake, since one is nearly always paying, getting... See more

AMANDA MONTELL: I really appreciated this video from Kurzgesagt, which articulates how the current hyper-connected state of the internet has destroyed our collective mental health. The video suggested the glory days of social media were actually the early 2000s, when like-minded users could gather in niche, siloed forums to discuss common interests... See more

I didn’t mind social media when it was just one aspect of the internet, and it was largely just for that first word, “social.” But it slowly became the everything place, and now it’s bite-sized versions of news, art, ads, politics, obituaries, health advice, crimes against humanity, kittens, low-rent humor, messages from friends, soft-core porn, go... See more

When platforms make their livings by harvesting and selling our attention, they achieve that by shoving unsolicited junk into our minds, while we obediently scroll down and down and down.